Lead By Creativity

    My Leadership Philosophy

    Over the past two years, I have engaged with professors, classmates, colleagues, and teammates that have challenged, equipped, developed, and expanded my leadership practices in the areas of planning, strategy, and communication. In my pursuit to understand what leadership is and who I personally want to be as a leader, I have reflected on various opportunities that have provided valuable insight for me to help me develop my philosophy of leadership. These opportunities include attending leadership conferences, participating in leadership programs in the communities I work and live in, holding leadership positions at the organization I work for, and ultimately pursuing my graduate degree in Organizational Leadership at Gonzaga University. In my inaugural course in the ORGL program, I was able to develop my own personal philosophy of leadership. Kouzes and Posner’sThe Leadership Challenge (2017) inspired me and gave me valuable insight into my own personal philosophy of leadership. In this reflection, I am revisiting the leadership pillars that define my philosophy of leadership and how I am integrating them into my present life, as well as how I am continuing to implement them to develop into the leader I aspire to be.

    The Pillar of
    Credibility

    The first pillar I will discuss is credibility. I believe that this pillar is the bedrock that my philosophy of leadership sits on. Kouzes and Posner (2017) give the essential characteristics of honesty, competent, inspiring, and forward-looking (pp. 33-37) as the essential components of a credible leader. I believe that this instills trust in others, and this causes me to live out authenticity and integrity every day. I believe that people want their leaders to be honest because a leader’s honesty is also a reflection upon their own honesty (Kouzes and Posner, 2017, p. 33). Next, people must believe that the leader is competent to guide them along the path to the future (Kouzes and Posner, 2017, p. 34). Personally, it would be difficult for me to follow someone if they don’t know what they are doing or what direction they are headed. The next characteristic is to be inspiring. A person who is enthusiastic and passionate about future possibilities conveys to others a stronger belief in those possibilities than those who show little or no emotion (Kouzes and Posner, 2017, p. 35). I perceive inspiration as a valuable asset of an effective leader. Last, forward-looking is the fourth component that completes this pillar of credibility. People expect leaders to have a sense of direction and a concern for the future of the organization (Kouzes and Posner, 2017, p. 37). The next pillar I will discuss is essentially the behavioral definition of credibility found in seeking feedback.

    The Pillar of
    Seeking Feedback

    Seeking feedback is the action effective leaders take to get a perspective on how aligned others see them. There is simply no way to get around the fact that you can’t grow as a leader without getting feedback (Kouzes and Posner, 2017, p. 382). Allowing and accepting feedback from others also gives me the added benefit of others accepting honest feedback in return. The key here is doing something with that feedback. Giving the impression that I am above the feedback or that I just don’t care will negatively affect the first pillar of credibility along with my effectiveness as a leader. The pillar I will discuss next focuses on finding my voice and affirming and aligning shared values as an effective leader.

    The Pillar of
    Shared Values

    Understanding the values of others and building alignment around values that everyone can share, I feel, is essential to my success as a good leader. While credibility is the underlining foundation to my philosophy of leadership, shared values help support that foundation by building productive and genuine working relationships (Kouzes and Posner, 2017, p. 61). This promotes positivity and productivity within the team. This is achieved by getting people involved in the process, making them feel like you, the leader, are genuinely interested in their perspectives, and that they can speak freely with you (Kouzes and Posner, 2017, p. 65). This will help me foster a caring and constructive environment. The last pillar I will discuss directly relates to the practice of enabling others to act through collaboration.

    The Pillar of
    Collaboration

    Kouzes and Posner (2017) describe collaboration as a critical competency for achieving and sustaining high performance (p. 197). Achieving this extraordinary performance isn’t possible unless there’s a strong sense of shared creation and shared responsibility (Kouzes and Posner, 2017 p. 197). This is an important component to my philosophy of leadership because it focuses on developing cooperative relationships through the essentials of creating a climate of trust and facilitating relationships, which directly relates to my first pillar of credibility. Trust, one of the components of credibility mentioned in my first pillar, is required to build collaboration and promote relationships where people work cooperatively.